A top infrastructure executive at the Public Sector Pension Investment Board has been appointed to lead the federal government’s new $15-billion Canada Growth Fund, The Logic has learned. 

Patrick Charbonneau—previously the pension plan’s global head of infrastructure investments—will lead the Canada Growth Fund (CGF), according to two sources with knowledge of the appointment. The Logic agreed not to name the sources because the move has yet to be publicly announced. 

Ottawa proposed the CGF in the April 2022 budget, positioning it as a way to close an annual shortfall of up to $125 billion in climate spending needed to reach the country’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. The program will offer financing and guarantees for cleantech companies and decarbonization megaprojects in a bid to attract further private capital. 

In March, Ottawa announced it would outsource management of the program to PSP Investments, a Crown corporation that handles $243.7 billion in federal public servants’ retirement savings. 

PSP Investments did not provide comment by deadline.

The CGF is part of the Liberal government’s response to the US$369-billion U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which officials worry could draw investment and projects to the U.S. at Canada’s expense. Ottawa has already been forced to up its subsidies for EV battery plants, while energy firms are being courted to move carbon capture builds across the border. 

The federal government hopes its new fund will move projects into gear and attract follow-on private capital by providing financing on favourable terms, taking a smaller share of profits when projects succeed and underwriting more of the costs if they underperform. It could buy equity in or debt from firms; act as a limited partner backing other funds; commit to paying for set volumes of captured carbon, hydrogen and other cleantech production; and issue price guarantees. 

Ottawa outsourced the CGF to PSP Investments to tap into private-sector deal making experience and quickly begin deploying capital. “PSP has a large stable of very good investors,” a senior government official told reporters during the March budget lockup, noting the fund needs such expertise to deliver on its objectives. (Finance Canada conducts such briefings on the condition that participating bureaucrats not be named.) The CGF “will begin investing in the first half of 2023,” the budget promised. It has yet to do so.

Charbonneau joined PSP Investments in May 2006 as a senior analyst in its infrastructure practice, just as it was beginning to put money into the asset class. In May 2017, he was one of four executives chosen to lead the pension fund’s new European team, based in London. 

PSP Investments had $29.4 billion in infrastructure assets at the end of March, with European and Canadian holdings accounting for 37.6 per cent and 7.2 per cent of the total, respectively. The division’s five-year returns outstripped those of the firm’s real estate and natural resources units but trailed its private equity portfolio. 

Since Charbonneau was named head of infrastructure, PSP Investments has acquired significant stakes in Havfram, an Oslo-headquartered firm servicing offshore wind farms; Radius, a Philadelphia-based telecom leaseholder; and Spark Infrastructure, an electricity transmission company headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

The CGF was officially incorporated in December 2022 as a subsidiary of the Canada Development Investment Corporation (CDEV), a Crown corporation that holds the federal government’s stakes in the Trans Mountain pipeline and Hibernia oilfield. Ottawa will sign an investment management agreement with PSP governing how it runs the fund. CDEV did not provide comment by deadline.

Clarification: This story has been updated with more precise language about Patrick Charbonneau’s role with the Canada Growth Fund.